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Engineers Have More Sons, Nurses More Daughters
Bifurcati writes "While it might be irrelevant for many /.ers, a recent study has shown that people in stereotypically male professions (engineering, IT, mathematics, etc) are more likely to have sons than daughters, while nurses, therapists and teachers tend to produce more girls. Based on independent survey data, engineering types produce 140 boys to every 100 girls, while nurses and the like produce 135 girls to 100 boys. The explanation is unclear, but it might have interesting long-term social implications. A more detailed summary of the journal article is available on Illuminating Science."
Does it come out as a trannie?
Studies have shown that a mother-to-be's diet high in calcium and magnesium including milk, beans, cereals, cheese and nuts may favor a baby girl, whereas a diet high in pizza and coke apparantly favors the conception of a baby boy.
That's why they do the graduate engineering/nursing mixers!
The Raven
Just the news I need to hear in order to start my line of supersmart offspring that will form the ultimate Revenge of the Nerds. Mwuhahahahahahahha
Oh wait, according to my calculations the probability of me getting laid is 3x10^-8
Duh! It's because boys have boys and girls have girls. Oh, wait...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Crap, I was looking forward to having 1 boy, and 1 girl. Now I find out I need 1.4 boys, until I can have my 1 girl.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Does it come out as a trannie?
Do you mean "comes out" as in born or "comes out" as in closet?
Is that it has something to do with genes. I think boys are more likely to get a Y chromosome, while girls are more likely to get an X. I'm planning a PHD thesis around this.
Hopefully (we dont have children yet), I'll have a healthy boy or girl, who will take great care of me AND my source code in my very old age.
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
My wife was a nurse before becoming a teacher. So far we have 1 daughter.
So clearly I need to spend some more time at a computer if we're ever going to have a boy... oh, wait.
I think the real reason is some engineers even manage to scare off their own X sperm.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION! CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION!
My statistics professors are currently:
a) rolling in their graves
b) suffering cranial detonations
c) weeping like Baby Jesus
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
uhhh my mother is a mental health nurse and my father is an engineer and yes, I'm transsexual.
shit.
The study did not say why this phenomenon occurred, but The Sunday Times quoted a specialist in evolutionary psychology as saying it could be because the children of "systemiser" parents appeared to encounter more testosterone in the womb, making their gender more likely to be male.
We know what these psychologists were doing in biology class, and it wasn't paying attention to what was being taught.
Easy explanation: people in stereotypically male professions, except for jocks, are less able to attract an attractive mate. This sad fact leads them to disproportionately engage in sex using the "doggy" position to avoid looking at each other's ugly faces. And, as has been proven, this results in semen getting in closer to the egg where the male sperm can impregnate. Face-to-face intercourse requires sperm to swim farther, giving the advantage to the female sperm, which have greater stamina and can impregnate after all the wimpy male sperm have died out.
Well, XX sperm would cause ill childs anyway (namely XXX womans, unlessa the egg cell has an anomaly itself).
:-)
However, solving equations of course favours Y chromosomes. That's because you always solve after X, so you have its actual value and therefore can eliminate it. Eliminating X of course doesn't affect sperms with an Y chromosome (because it doesn't have an X to eliminate), but only sperms with an X chromosome (after all, x is exactly what you eliminate).
SCNR
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Repeat after me
"I'm a science wenie and need to get out more."
The article doesn't draw conclusions. Its just an interesting set of data.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Have you ever wondered why fat parents have fat children? Or why Chinese parents have Chinese children? It's no coincidence.
No no, OS X favors girls, Linux/UNIX (excluding OS X) favors boys, windows favors inbreeding.
I already have a girl, so apparently I need to have 1.4 boys. The whole boy is gonna be fine but what am I gonna do with 40% of a boy? I mean, aside from encouraging him to be a high school social studies teacher.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
You must not be from America! Good Conservative science tells us that no fertilized egg ever dies, since that's when life begins!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
What happens if *gasp* an Engineer marries a Nurse? So they both want to be on top right? What you get is the barrel-roll position. Occasionaly you end up with the RODEO position as well as the one on bottom tries to buck off the partner currently on top. WWF meets the bedroom sorta.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups. -- 0 1 My two bits
I love this game.
Repeat after me, "I'm a bit daft, and I like to think others will repeat silly things I say from time to time."
Now, go have a beer.
How would somebodies profession really determine his/her childs' sex?
I think they have completely misinterpreted the data here. The data implies that the gender of a person's offspring can retroactively determine the occupation of the parent. And let me tell you, I was quite surprised to find out that I am a nurse!
If I may say so, life is a game, and there's so much to do and so few turns.
-Reiner Knizia
>BTW, what about Emacs and vi
;)
I don't think their users breed enough to make good statistics